


The Most Ragged Edges

by twinfinite



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Ozai's A+ Parenting, Set on Ember Island, Zuko's Tragic Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 03:13:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinfinite/pseuds/twinfinite
Summary: In hindsight, Zuko really should have seen this conversation coming. He can almost hear Li and Lo chanting wickedly about the magic of Ember Island, about waves smoothing away rough edges…





	The Most Ragged Edges

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as my take on that missing moment where the rest of the gang learns about Zuko's scar. It's been done a million times over, but I couldn't resist.

 In hindsight, Zuko really should have seen this conversation coming. He can almost hear Li and Lo chanting wickedly about the magic of Ember Island, about waves smoothing away rough edges…

He admits that he must give credit where it’s due, however. It’s been almost three weeks since he convinced everyone that hiding out in the Fire Nation royal family’s private beach house wasn’t a sure-fire death sentence, and they’ve surprisingly held out asking him some painful questions about why the happy days he alluded to having had with his family had crumbled away so thoroughly that they had allowed the lavish home to fade into a dilapidated husk of the good old days.

It’s not as if he hadn’t seen the curiosity on their faces when he first let them into the darkened halls, not even bothering to hide the damage he’d done weeks before, ransacking the place and burning whatever family memorabilia he could get his hands on. Broken picture frames littered the floor and a few torn portraits that escaped his wrath lay crumpled. The stone imprint of his youthful handprint lies in pieces against the wall he’d thrown it into.

It is certainly no secret that Zuko’s family situation is a complete disaster, but no questions were asked. He could tell that Sokka was five seconds away from asking something uncomfortable, but once he was one the receiving end of a deadly glare from Katara, he clearly reconsidered his next words.

“Wow, this place is actually kind of a dump,” he noted casually.

“I’m sure we can make it pretty livable in a couple of days,” Katara retorted.

Zuko tried to ignore the looks of vague pity, but he had a feeling that his face was betraying a good deal more bitterness than he cared to admit.

“The mess is my fault mostly, but it’s not as bad as it looks. Everyone can get their own room, and the courtyard is a great place for bending practice,” Zuko offered, the only explanation he was willing to give at that point. He gave a pointed look to everyone that clearly read _don’t push it._ They scattered, and he foolishly thought that he was off the hook. Now, he imagines the sound of Li and Lo cackling.

The conversation starts off completely innocuous, of course. They’re all gathered around the courtyard for dinner, exhausted from a long day of training under the hot sun. Sokka is in the middle of regaling Suki with an exciting, if not somewhat exaggerated, tale of how he, Katara, and Aang had gone head to head with a group of deadly pirates and had managed to best them at their own game.

“Wait, so you just flew off into the sunset on Appa? And you still managed to steal…from pirates?” Suki asked, her voice vaguely skeptical.

“I think you’re skipping over the part where you were dumb and got captured by the pirates first,” Katara cuts in, clearly basking in her brother’s embarrassment.

“Yeah, well you got tied to a tree by Zuko!” Sokka counters indignantly.

Aang laughs. “I almost forgot Zuko was there, too!”

Zuko scowls wearily at the mention; hardly a day is allowed to go without some reminder of his darker days as the nasty Avatar hunter. By this point, the awkwardness is beginning to wear off somewhat, and he almost feels like he can stop apologizing for each individual misdemeanor. This is partially due to the fact that people (mainly Toph and surprisingly enough, Katara) have been using it ammunition to guilt trip him into doing various favors and chores.

“I’d almost forgotten I was there, too. Oh wait, no I hadn’t. My boat got destroyed that day.”

“But seriously, when weren’t you there?” Sokka ponders. “I mean, you seriously needed to get a hobby. It felt like you were everywhere!”

“Hey, I took my job as Avatar hunter very seriously,” Zuko tries to joke. Joking about the past has gone over much better once Katara stopped wanting to snap his neck if he got out of line.

“Why did you take it so seriously, anyway?” Suki inquires. “I mean, you chased him literally halfway around the world and burned down an entire village trying to get to him. Didn’t you have better things to do, being the crown prince and all?”

A few weeks ago, that statement coming from Suki may come off as much more hostile, but after living in close quarters for weeks as part of the same team, enough of the heat has gone from her feelings towards Zuko that the question is more innocent curiosity than bitter accusation.

“Well, I mean…I wasn’t exactly…I was kind of banished at the time…don’t you guys already know, anyway?” Zuko truly doesn’t feel like trying to express the exact situation that lead to his three-year obsession.

The blank stares he receives answer his question.

“How’re we supposed to know why you were obsessed with catching Aang?” Sokka asks. “You were too busy throwing fireballs at us to chat about motives.”

“All I know is that you were some angry jerk with a ponytail,” Toph chimes in.

“Okay, first off all, I don’t have a ponytail anymore, and--,”

“Wait!” Katara interrupts him before he can even begin his defense. “I remember now. When you had me tied up that one time, you kept going on about how you needed to get your honor back.”

“What does that even mean?” Sokka asks.

Zuko sighs. “I thought the terms of my banishment were…I don’t know. Common knowledge.”

“Zuko, we grew up in the Southern Water Tribe. Word didn’t really get around about anything.” Katara points out.

“I lived in a tiny village. We heard rumors about what was happening in the Fire Nation but nothing specific,” Suki explains.

“My parents never let me out of the house. You think they told me about politics?” scoffed Toph.

“I lived in an iceberg,” Aang puts in. “I didn’t even know you were banished. I didn’t even know people _could_ be banished!”

At this point Zuko would love to walk away from this line of interrogation, and he’s having difficulty containing his irritation.

“Okay, you want to know why I was so obsessed? I wasn’t allowed to come home until I captured the Avatar, alright? I wanted my birthright back. I wanted to not live on a boat anymore. I wanted…” he trails off. “I just wanted to end my banishment.”

Silence follows, during which everyone seems to hope Zuko will calm down. The sound of the distant waves and the cool breeze does, as it turns out, have a tranquilizing effect. Zuko still avoids eye contact with everyone, but he no longer feels like setting the beach house on fire. Well, not any more than he usually does, at least.

Sokka, clearly beyond the point during which he can control his innate curiosity, is the one to ask the question on everyone’s mind.

“What’d you do that was so bad it got you banished from the _Fire Nation_ , of all places?”

Zuko has put up many walls to contain the memories his banishment. At first it was to preserve his opinion of his father and nation, and now, because he can truly recognize the cruelty of it all and he would rather not get lost in the great unfairness. He is certainly not planning on baring his soul to anyone about it, not even the people he’s come to trust with his life.  

“It’s…a long story,” he says simply.

“You know, we’ve got a lot of time,” Toph says. Though her face remains expressionless, he can tell she’s looking for a good story.

“By ‘it’s a long story’, I mean that it's a story I don’t want to tell,” Zuko snaps back. He feels a bit bad about raising his voice to Toph, who he still owes for burning, but he has these walls for a reason and he’s willing to push back in order to keep them neatly in place.  

He knows what’s coming next, and he resents it.

“Don’t you kind of owe us an explanation? After chasing us around so much?” Katara starts.

“After burning down my village.”

“Attacking us all the time.”

“Stealing my necklace and using it as a bargaining chip.”

“Burning my feet.”

“How about that time you threatened our _grandmother_?”

They’re being cruel and they know it, but Zuko can’t help but feel that it is perhaps justified. True, he did all of those terrible things, but this isn’t really about that. If he’s being honest with himself, he knows that the reason they want to know is because ever since he’s changed loyalties, he’s learned so much about everyone else but he’s given away so little of himself. By coming to them and asking to join after for so long being the face they’ve attached to the enemy, he asked for so much blind trust. Though he’s proven himself to be a valuable ally on more than one occasion, he has refused to trust them with any personal details. They don’t know his motivations. They don’t understand how he’s come to be here. The kind of trust he’s been asking for needs to be a two-way exchange, and he hasn’t put in his part. No one has said anything, but it’s creating a silent rift. In some ways, he’s still just the same face of the enemy dressed in the clothes of a friend.

“Come on, guys, Zuko doesn't need to tell us if he doesn’t want to,” Aang speaks up, putting an end to what could have been a very long list of grievances. He locks eyes with Zuko, his gaze jarringly wise.

_“It’s okay not to be ready,”_ says Aang’s gentle smile.

Zuko feels a rush of gratitude, but he supposes he’s as ready as he’ll ever be to talk about that day. Which is to say, he’s not at all, but he’ll do it if that’s what it takes to make his allies feel more like his friends.

“That’s alright, Aang. They’re right. I guess I owe you all that much, after everything that’s happened,” he says simply. His voice is steady and confident, but in reality he doesn't even know where to start. He looks amongst his allies, all seated around the fire looking at him, waiting for him to speak. He’s learned so much about them in these few tumultuous weeks.

Suki has been fiercely protecting her village since she was a little girl but left home to do whatever she could for the war effort.

Toph never had a real friend until she meet Aang, Katara, and Sokka.

Sokka was the only man left in his village, and he still feels the pressure to stack up to the needs of the war effort stretched very, very thin.

Katara openly grieves for her mother and is the most gentle and compassionate person he’s ever met, but she can also be the most brutal.

Aang has seen the slaughter of everyone he’s ever known, but he still can find the optimism to see a potential friend in anyone. Even him.

So for them, he speaks.

“I was banished when I was thirteen years old. I guess the thing you have to understand is that growing up, I was always…disappointing to my father. I wasn’t a natural firebender, and next to Azula, I was worthless in his eyes. He always saw me as weak, and he _always_ let me know how he that’s how he felt. But he was my father, and I wanted to make him proud so badly! So I tried to show him my worth in other ways. I tried to be a model prince, and to learn everything I could about leading my country.”

“When I was thirteen, I thought I should be old enough to sit in on war meetings. I was going to be Fire Lord some day, so I figured that I should know what’s going on, you know? My uncle, he knew it was a bad idea, but… I didn’t listen. I never listened to him when I should have!”

Zuko’s voice has adopted a desperate edge, but he takes a breath and continues on.

“I don’t know what I expected exactly. At first, it really was just as boring as my uncle said it would be. They talked about supply routes and troop movements. Dull stuff. But then one of the old generals started to propose an attack on an Earth Kingdom battalion, and I broke the one piece of advice my uncle gave me before I went into the war chamber: not to speak. The general wanted to sacrifice an entire division of new recruits just to mount a sneak attack, and I just couldn’t take it.”

“I was still so idealistic back then, and I had no idea what the leadership in my country was really like. I was raised being told that the Fire Nation was the strongest, wealthiest nation in the world, and that we were in the end only going to spread our prosperity to everyone else.  When I heard that the General wanted to do something so cruel to brand new soldiers- some of them who wouldn’t be much older than me- I stood up and told the General off for betraying his loyal people.”

Zuko couldn’t help but notice that the shared look amongst the group was turning to one of confusion.

“You probably don’t know too much about Fire Nation protocol, but in my nation- in the Fire Nation- what I did that day was considered an unacceptable act of disrespect. That’s why my uncle warned me not to speak; those things are taken very seriously. To follow proper tradition, when a person disrespects someone else of equal or higher rank, the only way to settle the issue is an Agni Kai.”

“A what?” prompts Sokka, whose bemused expression betrays exactly how different his Water Tribe upbringing was compared to Zuko’s Fire Nation equivalent.

“A duel,” Zuko answers. “They’re very official. A third party sets the time and day, and they tend to draw an impressive crowd. They don't happen very often. It's essentially a duel for your honor, but it can also be a duel for your life.”

“Hang on, don’t tell me that your dad kicked you out just because you lost a fight to some stuffy old geezer!” Toph calls out, and Zuko glares at her before remembering the futility of the action.

“That’s _not_ what happened,” he mutters darkly.

“Then what did?” Katara coaxes him to continue, her tone mild and encouraging.

“I agreed to the challenge. I stood up against the General and I told him I wasn’t scared of him at. I was ready to fight, and I was ready to beat him. I couldn’t help myself; I was just angry.”

Zuko pauses again. This has been the easier part to tell.

“But I didn’t understand just how seriously my father had taken it. When I’d spoken out against the General, I knew he was furious with me, but what I didn’t know was how personally he’d taken my… outburst. So on the day of the Agni Kai, he…”

Zuko is tempted to refuse to continue. This is the third time he’s ever verbally acknowledged his father’s actions in his entire life, and he still feels the need to make excuses justifying how his father was not wrong to punish him after years of believing he deserved what he got. But he’s done with that part of his life, he realizes. He needs so badly to be done.

“When I turned around to fight, my father was there instead. It was his war meeting, so he was the one who I’d truly disrespected.”

He can’t fight the shame that comes to him, recounting these events. Telling this story makes Zuko feel so small, like he’s still the boy on his knees begging his uncaring father to end his cruelty. For so long, his defense mechanism against this feeling has been rage, but now Zuko struggles to find his anger. His yearns for the protection it provided.

His friends look at him wide-eyed as comprehension dawns on them.

“You…had to duel the Fire Lord?” Aang asks, his voice small. He looks scared at the thought.

Zuko barks out a bitter laugh, and everyone recoils slightly at the sound.

“I was _supposed_ to duel the Fire Lord, yeah. But I was just a kid, and he was my father and I…I loved my father. That’s really messed up, I know. He’s a terrible person. I get it now. But back then, he was my idol, and I just couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.” Zuko shakes his head violently, as if momentarily transported back to the Agni Kai arena, facing his father and denying his orders to fight. He looks down, unwilling to see the reactions of those around him. He knows what he’ll see anyway. A combination of pity, anger, and disgust, surely.

“So what did you do?” prods Sokka this time, when it seems as though Zuko may not continue.

“What was I supposed to do?” he growls. “I apologized. I told him I was wrong, that I was his loyal son. And when he ordered me to fight, I bowed in front of him and refused. He had always said I was weak, and for him that was just the final proof. By not fighting him, by begging for mercy in front of a crowd of all of the top Fire Nation officials, I had shamed him. I wouldn’t fight for my honor, and for that, he banished me.”

There is silence for a moment, and then-

“That can’t be it!” Sokka yells. “How could- I mean- he’s your dad, why would he- it’s not a bad thing not to duel _your own father_!” It seems he’s found Zuko’s rage.

“That’s barbaric!” Katara cries, her eyes filling with both tears and wrath.

Zuko instinctively wants to yell out that they don’t understand, and that his father was just trying to teach him to be strong and brave like any leader should, but he holds back. In that moment, he finds his anger again. When he speaks again, it is to himself.

“For years, I never saw it that way. I don’t know how I could have been that blind! The worst thing isn’t even that he banished me. Actually,” he laughs, “that was the best thing he’s ever done for me.”

“The worst thing is that he made me feel like it was my fault. The worst thing is that when he stood in front of that crowd and burned me, he made me think that he was just being my father teaching me a lesson about respect. He burned me right in front of my sister and uncle and everyone I knew and I forgave him for it. He made me think that being sent off to hunt the Avatar was his kind of justice for failing him when really he just wanted to get rid of me.” Zuko’s voice has slowly risen with each sentence, but by the end, it falls. His frustration ebbs away, this verbal acknowledgement of his shame enough to lighten its burden for a moment.

“I wasted years trying to please a man whose idea of teaching kids about respect is to make them suffer. And that…that’s why I’m here. I’m not proud of what I did back then when I refused to see how wrong I was. I want to do something I can be proud of. For myself this time.”

With this last statement, Zuko finally lifts his eyes to face the group before him. They all meet his gaze, shock and sadness replacing the initial anger.

“Your scar,” Katara says simply. It’s not a question so much as a confirmation. Zuko flashes back to her cool touch under his burned eye, long ago in the caverns under Ba Sing Se.

“The mark of a banished prince,” he says, nodding with a slight smile.

Everyone is caught in a limbo of emotion; they go from concern to stunned realization and through a whole spectrum of irate to sympathetic before anyone says anything. They don’t know what to say. What can they say?

“That’s rough, buddy.” 


End file.
